In a Tuesday post for Slate, lefty pundit Marcotte explored the religious right’s fascination with (and perhaps exploitation of) the Duggar family and how it might change in light of the Josh Duggar sexual-abuse scandal. “The Duggars' [religious] extremism elicited admiration and maybe a little envy among the ranks” of Christian conservatives, Marcotte commented, “but perhaps now Republicans will learn a lesson about the dangers of embracing religious extremists.”

Marcotte thinks the GOP’s affinity for the Duggars exemplifies the religious right’s misogynistic race to the bottom: “Just as urban liberals compete to see who can eat the most organic food and libertarian types race to see who can have the most polluting truck, Christian conservatives compete to see who can deny women's autonomy the hardest.”

Government-funded contraception is a fine mantra, say liberals – but you’d better be careful to offer it in a way that shows you “respect women’s intelligence.”

In response to an Arkansas lawmaker’s proposition that Medicaid offer free surgically implanted contraception to single mothers of one child, Slate’s Amanda Marcotte said the program to cover intrauterine devices disrespects women in a piece headlined “Arkansas Legislator Says Single Mothers Should Get Free IUDs for the Sake of ‘Taxpayers.’”

Jonathan Chait, Paul Waldman, and Amanda Marcotte each discuss how the Wisconsin governor and probable presidential candidate has responded to recent questions about issues including evolution, Obama’s religious beliefs, and Obama’s patriotism, as well as how his answers might play with the “paranoid” Republican base that thinks, in Waldman’s words, that “Obama is The Other, an alien presence occupying an office he doesn't deserve.”

On Friday’s edition of “The View,” both Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell expressed great surprise and horror at the reports from a nasty divorce that actor Stephen Collins admitted sexually abusing young girls.

This should be added to the growing list of scandals over sex abuse in liberal Hollywood. But at The Daily Beast, uber-feminist writer Amanda Marcotte tried to smear this dark new portrait of Collins all over the religious right and the Parents Television Council (founded by our MRC president Brent Bozell).

Indian-American actress Mindy Kaling not only stars in her own sitcom on Fox called “The Mindy Project,” she’s in charge of it. You might think that feminists would celebrate that achievement, but that would show that you don’t know about feminists. Apparently, nothing satisfies them. Instead, they are demanding she use her program to sell feminism, and its crowning joy, abortion.

Kaling committed a gaffe among the Hollywood Left by telling a Flare magazine interviewer she had no plans to address what the magazine called “the American right’s current war on abortion.” Kaling said “It would be demeaning to the topic to talk about it in a half-hour sitcom.”